Growth Strategy Archives

Building an Agile Brand

Posted on March 11, 2021 by Joanna Schull

The notion of ‘business agility’ — the ability to quickly adjust business resources and assets in a way that enables your business to prepare for or react to shifting markets and global conditions has always been important — but the experience of COVID-19 and the past 12 + months have driven that point home relentlessly. As we enter into this next phase of ‘the new normal’ one thing is certain: the world and how we work is forever changed and will keep changing — building a brand that enables your business to respond is the new opportunity.

What’s required? The ability to adapt to changing market conditions, customer needs, and shifts in demand all while avoiding perceptions of being reactionary or haphazard. It’s the challenge of maintaining a steady focus on your company’s North Star while navigating an operational environment that may be in a state of flux. It’s the need to keep the sails full, and the boat moving forward while making the necessary changes to stay on track in real-time.

Brand as an Enabler of Business Agility

It is certainly true that the agile businesses of today owe a great deal of that ability to flex and pivot to underlying technologies and organizational structures, but it’s also true that a company’s brand and positioning in the marketplace is also a critical factor in enabling business agility. In our experience working with companies both big and small, we’ve uncovered some key factors that go into building a brand that supports the agile business.

Allow Your Brand To Aspire to More

No one has a magic crystal ball that can predict the future, but most companies do have a business plan and a roadmap that maps the trajectory of where they are today and where they aspire to be in the future. When working with our clients to develop a brand strategy and positioning, it’s our job is to help companies build a brand that is strategically focused and works in the present — but also allows for predicted future growth and unpredictable turns of events. This can be achieved through a disciplined process of understanding how the brand needs to support current sales, revenue development, and be elastic enough to still be relevant for future expansion.

Personality Matters

Your brand’s personality is another important aspect of branding that’s often overlooked when planning for an unpredictable future. If your company is large, established, and predictable, that’s an important aspect of your brand’s personality. When it comes time to pivot, flex, or change, lean into the credibility of your size, strength, and track record as a proof point as to why it’s ok for the business to shift. Conversely, if you’re a scrappy startup, your brand’s personality should reflect that — and when you find yourself needing to pivot or adapt to new conditions, use your reputation and personality as an ‘agile upstart or challenger of the status quo’ to help make sense of change.

Trust and Permission To Change

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, brand building is ultimately about creating trust between your company and your customers. When it comes time for your business to make a sudden change — whether due to unforeseen competitive factors, global events, or simply to take advantage of new opportunities — the brand trust that you build with your customers today is what will give you permission to adapt down the road.

There are of course multiple other factors that make business agility possible, from its technical infrastructure and organizational structure, to how a company thinks about and manages change — but ultimately those must be supported by a strong, flexible, and trusted brand that permits you to change in the mind of your customers.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

The Value of Investing in Your Brand to Drive Long-Term Growth 

Posted on January 8, 2019November 22, 2024 by Chris Ames

Attention Span Is Dead, Long Live Attention Span

For years, we’ve been told that our attention spans are shrinking. There is so much information, so many channels and devices vying for our attention, that we couldn’t possibly focus on anything for too long. Combine that with economic pressures, shareholder expectations, and the race to keep up in the digital age, and you get something called short-termism.

Fueled by our fixation on metrics, short-termism is a concentration on quick wins to move the needle. It posits an immediate, attention-grabbing impact over strategically driven, brand-building initiatives that have a higher long-term ROI.

Shorterm-ism Is Shortsighted

This type of thinking is contagious because for those who are tasked with moving the needle – whether it’s sales, marketing, or social media analytics – the pressure to demonstrate an uptick in growth is relentless. While you may signal towards growth in the short-term, this strategy erodes the underlying brand equity and robs you of a chance at something sustainable.

Beyond being unsustainable, it sets up a false dichotomy – that short-term growth and long-term brand building are mutually exclusive ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Investing in your brand is the easiest way to drive – and most importantly, maintain – growth.

Play the Long Game

McKinsey’s research covered more than 600 large and mid-sized publicly listed companies in the U.S. over the preceding 15 years. They found that firms with long-term strategies had 47% more top-line growth than other companies, 36% higher earnings, and added an average market capitalization of $8.67 billion.

Similarly, a U.K. study by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), which analyzed 500 effectiveness case studies over 20 years, showed that long-term campaigns were three times more efficient than short-term campaigns, three times more likely to drive market-share improvement, and 60% more likely to deliver profit improvement.

Brand Building Is Worth the Burn

So, if long-term brand building is much more conducive to growth, why do so many people fall for the trap of short-termism? Because brand building is difficult. We demand everything from brands. Consider this excerpt from Barbara E. Kahn’s book Global Brand Power:

“A brand must be elastic enough to allow for reasonable category and product-line extensions, flexible enough to change with dynamic market conditions, consistent enough so that consumers who travel physically or virtually won’t be confused, and focused enough to provide clear differentiation from the competition. Strong brands are more than globally recognizable; they are critical assets that can make a significant contribution to your company’s bottom line.”

That’s a tall order, but it’s a necessary one if you truly want to grow. A focus on long-term brand building doesn’t mean you can’t have quick wins. Sometimes, quick wins are necessary to boost morale or capitalize on a time-sensitive trend. It just means that each endeavor needs to ladder up to larger brand strategy.

In a conversation on brand building, Angela Richards, KFC’s Group Marketing Director, discussed the importance of creating lasting emotional connections, even when the immediate goal might be a short-term tactical one.

“We have a really big innovation funnel and a really strong retail calendar, but for us more recently, that functional retail calendar has morphed so the brand directs the retail calendar – and the brand’s job is to create that emotional connection,” she said. “It’s okay now to say we are less reliant on new product development to drive those sales, because that emotional connection of the brand leading the retail calendar is driving core sales and core growth.”

The Magical 60:40 Ratio

The big challenge for CEOs and CMOs is finding the perfect balance between the short and long-term. Unsurprisingly, the aforementioned IPA study highlighted the fact that long-term brand building campaigns and short-term activation campaigns worked best in synergy. Strong brands had better results from their activations channels and strong activations, in turn, drove more sales for the brand. On average, they found that “effectiveness seems to be optimized when around 60% of the communications budget is devoted to brand building, and around 40% to activation.”

Whether it’s the mad rush to keep pace with the digital era, the lure of immediate ROI, or simply a lack of education around the importance of brand building, many companies are sacrificing an enduring market share for quick wins. As McKinsey and IPA have demonstrated, correcting this balance is essential if you want your growth to last.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.

Your Startup’s Growth Strategy Starts with Brand Strategy

Posted on September 28, 2017 by Carol Emert

You’re running a startup. When should you invest in brand strategy?

Put another way, when do you need to grow? When do you need to acquire new customers, build your culture and recruit the right people?

For a startup whose primary job is growth, brand strategy can be a critical tool. So the answer to the question about when you need brand strategy is: Not at the very beginning, but probably earlier than you think.

We recently branded a stealth-mode software startup whose CEO is a highly successful serial entrepreneur. He has worked with Emotive Brand several times. This time, he brought us in earlier than ever, because he has seen how brand strategy can power growth.

When his startup leaves stealth mode and launches into growth mode, as it is poised to do, it will be powered by the right customer insights, the right value proposition and the right messaging to succeed.

Too Early v. Too Late

That doesn’t mean you need brand strategy on Day One. Startups are right to get their products built and tested before worrying about anything else. If you don’t have a viable product, you have nothing to grow a brand or a company on. So early on, tunnel vision is good.

The next stage, the growth stage, is where brand strategy can have meaningful impact. Brand strategy can power your growth strategy by identifying who your best customers are and clarifying what you do better than anyone else to address the pain points they face every day.

Brand strategy defines your company’s unique brand experience, the voice with which you will speak to the marketplace and the messaging that will get you leads with the right people.

If your brand isn’t clear, your growth strategy will have a tough time defining both long-term goals and the short-term tactics for getting there.

Avoid Stalling Growth Before It Starts

We worked with a startup client a couple of years ago in exactly this position. The company had a great team and top-notch venture backing. It enjoyed a successful run with its initial friends-and-family customer set – but when the time came to implement its growth strategy, it hit a wall.

The company was trying to build its business with a tech-heavy product story rather than directly addressing the challenges it solved for its customers. Its venture firm sent the startup to us.

Three months after engaging Emotive Brand, the startup was ready to relaunch with a fresh story – and quickly started hitting its goals. The same startup has engaged us on a number of projects since, to keep its story relevant amid shifts in its competitive landscape.

As your startup prepares for growth mode, your team will be growing too. Brand strategy that clarifies who you are and what you believe can help internally as well as externally, helping you recruit the right people and build a strong internal culture.

Whether your startup is poised to grow internally, externally or both, brand strategy can make your growth strategy smarter, clearer and more successful.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm working with high-growth B2B companies.

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Tag: Growth Strategy